<p>Caltech is EA.</p>
<p>curious14: Was the senior discount analogy really necessary? I am feeling oldold enough without being reminded on a CC thread!</p>
<p>oldolddad
Congrats to your kids. I believe only 1 or 2 Lingles are offered a year, and same with Axlines. Quite an honor. Fortunately, Caltech offers upperclass merit awards. While these are not as generous, they do help parents and reward kids for accomplishments in GPA, research, and/or ECs.</p>
<p>Hmmm…I think it is a bad look to take money you don’t really really need–especially if it is to buy a prestige-something that you otherwise couldn’t afford. It’s like accepting a kickback for a Mercedes when you can only afford a Subaru. The Subaru is going to do the same job–get you from A to B–so why are you deserving of the kickback? Or it’s like going to the soup kitchen to get dinner three nights out of seven because the savings allows you to save up for weekend trips. That’s not us.</p>
<p>My son’s friend taking the $80K to go a a top 50 school when her succesful professional parents and extremely wealthy grandparents could have easily paid for a state school or a top 100 school–or even a top 25 school–that to me is unseemly. I don’t like those values. I think it’s the height of arrogance to accept an award like that because of a belief that your child will ‘enhance’ the experience of my full frieght kid. GMAGB. Let some Pell Grant scholar enhance their experience, for heck’s sake. The country would change a lot quicker if that happened. </p>
<p>But that’s me. We were offered a scholarship for S2 for his expensive high school. Didn’t take it–and it went to some other fairly well to do kid. That’s fine. It’s just not us.</p>
<p>I think the merit scholarships rewards students’ talent and hard work and they deserve them. Why a 7 or 8 grader can receive more than $50000 award from Spelling Bee and a college student should not receive a college scholarship? And should the Nobel laureates not receive any money at all?</p>
<p>small rathole … this has been a really interesting and fun discussion … thanks to all the posters on both sides for presenting challenging and respectful arguments … it’s threads like this that draw me to CC</p>
<p>Its back to values. At the reach schools S applied to, merit awards not offered. Caltech is the exeption, but again, only 2-3 of those awards offered, and to the absolute exceptional candidates. A match school offered $10,000 as bait, and others would have been free (state, NMFs, etc). He wanted to be challenged, & that was our top priority. Career fulfillment will probably remain a priority, and some professions that pay well will be rejected over personal fulfillment.</p>
<p>One thing I’ve learned in life is that belief systems rarely budge.</p>
<p>Our family is not wealthy in terms of income but many would consider us so in terms of cash assets and as a result our efc was $80k+. Even so our son did tons of research to find colleges which suited him well and might provide some degree of merit aid. One must assume that, by offering him merit aid, they were obtaining some compensatory benefits in return. Why else would they offer the merit aid?</p>
<p>However, we did discourage him from applying for independent scholarships, both local and from affinity groups. We felt that students from most other families had a greater need than we did.</p>
<p>The only exception was the Rensselaer Medal. Here he did ask his gc to go to bat for him. But RPI was among his top preliminary choices and he knew of no other student who was remotely considering RPI and were academically qualified to be considered.</p>
<p>Something that those of you who oppose the wealthy family accepting the merit grant should consider is that for the poorest kids the merit grant would have made little difference. In general the value of any merit grant is deducted from the need-based finacial aid package. For a middle income family receiving some of their need-based aid in the form of loans this might have resulted in replacing a loan with a grant. For the really poor kids, who receive the bulk of their aid in the form of grants anyway, it just means replacing one grant with another. I have been on other threads where the parents of merit grant recipients have complained about the injustice of this practice. Any comments?</p>
<p>originaloog: Interesting. My S did not want to apply for the local ones as he thought is would be kind of “piling on”. There is a big one specifically for his major that he was nominated for and he will probably get, but it is kind of national. He has received several full tuition and larger packages to pretty top schools. I think it would be foolsih to turn down something like these to go to a school that might be rated three spots higher in engineering (can’t see those ranking meaning too much), just to pay $200 K and say: “Look at me I really value education” especially if he likes the less costly program. I guess you really have not gone through the ups and downs in the economy and had it and lost it a few times to feel that spendng that much just because you think you can is the way to go. I am not talking about the very rich.
I will say it was interesting when he said to me a couple weeks ago: “If I take one of these free choices, can we use some of my college fund(the one we don’t really have) to give to a couple of the programs that helped me such as the orchestra to buy uniforms or instruments for poor kids, MathCounts, a volunteeer group that is losing it’s funding and a summer programs I enjoyed?”</p>
<p>Well, I felt bad for any grief I have given him whiel he was growing up ."Though I’ve belted you and flayed you,
By the livin’ Gawd that made you,
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din! "</p>
<p>Maybe S will be okay afterall.</p>
<p>My S did not want to apply for the local ones as he thought is would be kind of “piling on”. </p>
<p>Yep. That was D, also. She automatically received two for val but withdrew her nominations and applications for all the other “school” scholarships.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This year Caltech offers 30 Axline(tuition+ room/board), 30 Presidential(tuition) and 2 Lingle(full ride) among 500+ freshman admitted. There are renewable for 3 more years, with say 3.0 GPA for Axlines.</p>
<p>Caltech does not seem to publized their merit award component both for freshman and upper class awards(additional 60 of them). This indicates to me their merit award is not a marketing tool(present or future). It means to encourage, to challenge and to reward academic excellence for its small 800+ undergraduate student body.</p>
<p>I do think it is ethically wrong for the wealthy to apply for need-based aid. I know it sounds implausible, but the college financial aid guidebooks are full of strategies for appearing more “needy” than you are. In these cases I actually buy into the notion that the money these families get by using these strategies reduces the funds available for the truly needy.</p>
<p>Inverse,</p>
<p>I surrender. In this case (caltech) the motivation appears to be different.</p>
<p>Living in a state where every student with an SAT over 1290 and a 3.5 GPA gets 100% tuition plus $300/semester book stipend—I’m thinking the in state privates offer merit scholarships as a way of competing for these students. Same with nearby state schools (my son was awarded “merit” money from several state U’s which basically waived OOS tuition and threw in a little more on top of it.) Otherwise, it would be awfully hard to turn the heads of students who can go to perfectly good schools scot-free, no matter how wealthy they are.</p>
<p>curious14</p>
<p>You make a good point. I have friends with sky high EFCs who have done significant savings for their kids but still need merit aid to handle college COA without huge loans. I see no problem with them accepting the merit aid that is offered because some school really wants their kid. In our case, we would never suggest our son apply for a scholarship (except National Merit, where he got a small corporate scholarship), but I don’t have a problem with my son accepting a merit scholarship if his first choice school offers him one. As I’ve said previously, he and we would return the favor by being supportive of the college. If others don’t respond with the same generosity, well so much the worse, but there is no way to make this process completely fair, no matter how we try to slice and dice it. There are just too many factors involved.</p>
<p>curious: Unfortunately, there are several I know who have successfully abused the merit aid process. Some kids actually bragged to my D about it. She was somewhat upset.</p>
<p>oldolddad</p>
<p>How did they abuse the merit aid process? Just curious.</p>
<p>I was thinking that maybe we are too quick to judge from the outside looking in. Imagine parent is billionaire but the kind who tells his kid “as long as I’m paying I’m making the decisions.” The kid may rightly feel that this (a merit aid scholarship) is an opportunity to break free from that. As the song goes: “God bless the child that’s got his own.”</p>
<p>courious14: Exactly. College students should be independent from parents. I was forced to submit my step parents’s income tax return to college although they did not pay a dime. This made me work 10-25 hrs/week for 4 years. Luckily I was in the UC system.</p>